Uncanny Avengers #3 - Mind Fucking Awesome

I often roll my eyes at the conspiracy theorists that smoke way too much weed and think that the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and the Lizard people secretly run the world. There are just some people that refuse to accept the fact that the world is so boring and inept that the very notion of ruling it is both absurd and an obscene waste of energy. But make no mistake. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would love to rule the world. I'm positive that men like Rupert Murdoch, Glenn Beck, and Pat Roberston masturbate to thoughts of being worshiped like gods while they laugh gleefully as everybody they don't like is horribly tortured in front of them. But they know they'll never have that kind of power in an age where every possible leak that can be condensed into 140 characters will be blared all over the world within seconds.

In the world of Marvel comics, however, ruling the world isn't just possible. It's actually pretty easy if you've got a strong stomach, a massive ego, and way too much free time. This is a world where minds can be controlled, governments can somehow pay for floating helicarriers and killer robots, and the public doesn't go nuts when major cities are attacked and destroyed at least once a month. It's a world where a guy as ruthless as the Red Skull are among the most dangerous villains in the Marvel universe and in the post Avengers vs. X-men world, he's essentially a pit-bull roaming a country of sick kittens.

In the pages of Uncanny Avengers, the Red Skull has already proven how sadistic he's willing to be. He didn't just exhume Charles Xavier's dead body, cut out his brain, and probably jerk off into his rotting flesh for good measure. He actually merged his brain with Xavier's so that he has the powers of the world's most advanced telepath. With that power, he could mind-fuck the likes of Rogue and the Scarlet Witch. With that kind of power he could both make the universe's most awesome lesbian porn and create another M-Day. This way he can conquer the world in a nice, clean, efficient manner. It's basically the kind of plan that Hitler only fantasized about when he wasn't fantasizing about Benito Mussolini going down on him.

It's a twisted, yet dire conflict for this new brand of Avengers that Rick Remender has set up as a bold new partnership for the X-men and Avengers. It has also been billed as one of Marvel's most hyped books. Yet after two issues and some fucking annoying delays, it's been a difficult book to get excited about. The events in this book have barely been mentioned in the other Marvel NOW! books. It started off as a story that takes place directly after the events of Avengers vs. X-men. Now given the microscopic scale of the modern attention spans for most readers, it's starting to come off as one of those books that doesn't fit into anything. Like a pervert at a panty factory, it's just there without contributing much.

But now that Uncanny Avengers #3 is out, the story can finally move forward and maybe...just maybe we can see it tie into the greater Marvel NOW! universe. It would be hard not to acknowledge an event that involves the Red freakin’ Skull coming back from the dead armed with Charles Xavier’s telepathy. At the end of the previous issue, he mind fucked Rogue and the Scarlet Witch just before they were about to puke and/or shit themselves after seeing Charles Xavier’s dead, brainless body. Now he’s got them under his control and he’s using that same power to mind-fuck all of New York City. There’s actually some nice narration from Rick Remender, which is something we didn’t really see in the previous two issues. It seems bland, but it adds more detail into what the Red Skull is doing. It’s basic, essentially using his telepathy to turn average people into minority-hating, blood-thirsty, sociopaths. It’s basically doing what the Vatican, Fox News, and every governor of Texas that ever lived wished they could do.

Seeing weak-minded civilians get caught up in a blood-soaked hate-fest is nothing new. Hell, we see it every time the Lakers win the championship. But Rick Remender actually does something unique here in that he uses that narration I mentioned to describe some of the attackers and the victims. It’s not much. He basically just gives a short blurb about characters like a woman who just recently woke up a mutant and had powers that made her eyes look like she just saw her parents in a bukake video. Yet it’s still enough to make you actually give a damn about them and what’s happening to them. If you don’t, then you’re probably a sociopath and should go back to dissecting small animals in your basement.

Having already had to clean up a mess in New York City with Avalanche’s lobotomy-driven rampage, the Uncanny Avengers are quick to the scene. It also marks the first time Alex Summers is taking charge of the team. While I completely disagree with Captain America’s decision on the basis of him being a raging douche-bag who was demonstrably full of shit in the first issue, he does indicate that he inherited some of his brother’s competence despite not inheriting his ability to soak the panties of female telepaths. He orders the team to protect the civilians, which at this point are just beating the shit out of innocent people with the same candor that they would probably use to tell someone to fuck off on a message board. Yeah, it’s that bad.

But it isn’t just deranged civilians that the Uncanny Avengers have to face. The Red Skull is neither stupid nor lazy enough to think that he can win a battle without at least some team of genetically impure beings that Hitler would probably not approve of. We saw them in the previous issues and they’re basically the kind of shit guys like Zola and Sinister do on a weekend. One of them is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle rip-off named Crooked Emerald. He’s supposed to be the embodiment of human will without incurring a lawsuit from DC’s Green Lantern. He’s tasked with taking on Thor, who would have way too easy a time brushing off pissed off civilians. He also has a pretty easy time with this asshole, making me think that turtles that aren’t ninjas have little to offer.

Even with the Red Skull’s posse of freaks being easy fodder, this doesn’t change that other unpleasant detail about the Red Skull possessing Xavier-level telepathy. And last I checked, Captain America and Havok weren’t smart enough to recruit a psychic. Again, I bet Havok really wishes he inherited his brother’s knack for seducing telepaths. It starts to effect Captain America, who already has a reason to hate mutants after Avengers vs. X-men where he damn well knows that he fucked up more than Cyclops and got away with it. The Red Skull taps into that burning inclination to take his frustrations out on the closest mutant, but being Captain America he manages to resist because it just wouldn’t be good PR if a symbol of America was seen killing an innocent civilian without the aid of drone strikes.

Yet even though he doesn’t join in the riot, he clearly is affected by the Red Skull’s influence because he yells at Havok for being a shitty leader. He’s not entirely wrong. Just trying to contain the civilians rather than fighting the source that’s fucking with them is like suing the restaurant that made the scalding hot coffee and not the asshole that dropped it on you. It’s actually a really good scene because it shows that Captain America, for all his freedom-loving bravado, is still an over-privileged white guy who is inclined to blame minorities for shit that goes wrong. I guess that would make him a more honest Captain America, simply because it makes him more of a douche. I don’t mean to sound anti-American, but a country can be guilty of one too many dick moves.

Eventually, the team does shift their focus to the source of the shit storm. After Wolverine roughs up one of the Red Skull’s freakshows, he meets up with Rogue and the Scarlet Witch, who also managed to free themselves from his control. They inform him that the Red Skull is doing this with the brain of Charles Xavier, which he ripped out by digging his body up shortly after Wolverine gave a heart-felt eulogy. Wolverine is usually a pretty easy guy to piss off. But short of stealing his beer and cutting up Jean Grey with a meat cleaver, I can’t think of too many ways to piss him off more.

But the Red Skull is ready for Wolverine’s hissy fit in a way Nazi’s probably wish they were before they invaded the Soviet Union. It started when one of the Red Skull’s Nazi-approved freaks mind-fucked Thor into thinking his father, Odin, was standing in front of him. Then the Red Skull did the rest, using Xavier’s telepathy to appeal to the blond haired, blue-eyed Aryan side of Thor. That’s another detail that is often overlooked. Thor, for all his godly bravado, is still the kind of guy that Nazis would love to have on their side. And thanks to the Red Skull’s influence, he does join them.

And he does so just in time to confront a freshly pissed off Wolverine. First, the Red Skull has another one of his Nazi-approved freaks negate his powers. Then Thor does the rest with his hammer, giving Wolverine the kind of headache you could only get from going 12 rounds with a crystal meth addicted Mike Tysons. It marks an ominous end for the issue and one which Remender goes out of his way to state the Red Skull has a hell of a boner. It’s another one of those benefits to the narration that adds depth to the issue. The Red Skull may be a pissed off sociopath, but when he’s gleefully mind-fucking his enemies into brutalizing one another he’s one happy motherfucker.

I often look at heavily hyped comic books in the same way I look at the New York Yankees. They’re easy to hate because they get all the attention, sales, and glory. If they were actual people, they would be those rich douche-bag trust fund kids who never had to work to earn the caviar enema they get every morning. But there are times when, like the New York Yankees, those books earn the respect and praise they get. Sometimes it starts off rocky, but when it comes together it can either win you a World Series or make a damn good comic.

Uncanny Avengers #3 follows a style and theme that wasn’t that prominent in the first two issues. Maybe it was just a result of the bullshit delays, but it was a pretty striking shift. It went from merely following a random assortment of high-profile characters as they pieced together a new team with scotch tape and spit to putting that team in a position to really kick ass against a high-profile threat with a high-profile arsenal. While the high-profile aspect of this book has sometimes worked against it, this issue made it work in all the right ways by following each character and adding depth to their own personal conflicts.

But beyond the characters, Rick Remender showed that attention to detail that made his Uncanny X-Force run so epic. He actually highlighted some of the lesser characters, who in most comics would be akin to the poor saps in Star Trek that wore red uniforms and either ended up dead or overlooked. By giving a personal touch to each character on both sides, it heightens the emotion of the book. It isn’t just another battle between the Red Skull and the Avengers. It’s a personal struggle both for them and the people they’re trying to save. It’s basically the shit you never see in a Michael Bay movie, the humanity behind the explosions if you will.

The only real issues I could possibly have with this comic are the delays that always make me want to inject ammonia in my rectum and the sudden shift in style. I really do like the narrations that Remender used. It’s the kind of shit that really isn’t utilized by a lot of writers, who just like to have the characters speak, swear, and screw either vocally or with thought bubbles. Aside from Chris Claremont, few writers actually make an effort to make this shit work. So why the fuck wasn’t it greater part of the previous issues? It makes this issue seem inconsistent in the greater context of the story and even if the delays lasted longer than your attention span, it was still a major “Where the fuck was this?” moment.

Uncanny Avengers is a series that I had high hopes for and for the first two issues, it hasn’t really lived up to those hopes. I get that it’s hard for even the best steroid-addled baseball player to hit home runs every time, but it’s his own damn fault if he boasts that he can. Marvel boasted that Uncanny Avengers would be a big fucking deal in the post-Avengers vs. X-men world. This issue finally makes me feel as though they weren’t full of shit or shooting too many steroids when they said that. I give Uncanny Avengers #3 a 4.5 out of 5. Now if only Rick Remender and John Cassaday could keep this up by releasing this book on time more often, it would be supremely awesome. I don’t mean to sound needy, but when your patience is only as great as your supply of weed you can’t help it. And take it from a guy who once bought crushed maggots and thought it was pot. Good shit is worth waiting for. Nuff said!